russm wrote:
> 
> My (not nescessarily correct) understanding of this is -
> 
> The kernel understands enough about the Apple partition map to pretend
> it's a disklabel and access the defined partitions. After you newfs a
> partition the system tries to update the disklabel to say "partition a
> now has a ffs filesystem on it with a 512-byte blocksize" or some such
> housekeeping info. Because the disk doesn't _really_ have a BSD disklabel
> on it, this step fails.

Yep.

> The partition has still been newfs'd though, and is perfectly useable.
> Have you ever tried to mount/fsck a partition that you've newfs'd this
> way?

'Not sure' and 'no', respectively.  I'll try it.

.
.
.

Tried it and the answer is 'It Works!'.

So the cosmetic information in disklabel is wrong, but newfs, fsck and mount
(which are the ones that matter) are happy that the disk is valid?

BTW: Do I have to newfs the swap disk, or can that remain raw?

I'll try finishing the install on Monday and let you know how it went.


> As for booting from an HFS filesystem, isn't that a function of ofwboot
> and not the kernel? ofwboot from current snapshots can load a kernel from
> an HFS filesystem, ofwboot from the 1.5 release can't afaik.

I'm using ofwboot.xcf from my NetBSD 1.5 distro CD.  According to the place
we sourced it from, it's the "official" 1.5 distro (with proper printing,
etc).  On the root of the CD (at least under OS X) there is an ofwboot.xcf
and a boot.fs.  Copy these to root of the first partition of the first HD
(to the drive, not the desktop), drop into OF, and type 'boot
hd:9,ofwboot.xcf hd:9,boot.fs' and you're away.

Actually, you can put the ofwboot.xcf and boot.fs on any two devices, as
long as you can figure out their ID.  Under OS X (or Darwin), use 'pdisk
/dev/disk? -dump', where ? is 0 for the master HD, and 1 for the slave (G4
pillow only).  Or just remember how you built the partitions in Drive Setup:
the interesting devices start at 9.  eg On my G4 pillow, the boot driver is
'ultra1:10,ofwboot.xcf'.

-- 
Andrew White                Andrew.E.White@motorola.com